Vedanta Ltd on Friday announced a $850 million investment for raising oil and gas production from its Rajasthan oilfields by about 100,000 barrels a day. In a regulatory announcement, the company said its board of directors has approved brownfield growth projects. The fields were previously operated by Cairn India, which has now merged with Vedanta Ltd. "The oil and gas business has commenced its next phase of growth, which will result in an additional production of 100,000 barrels of oil and oil equivalent gas per day (boepd).

We expect to eventually ramp up to 275,000-300,000 boepd by FY2020," it said. The company currently produces less than 160,000 boepd from Rajasthan. Key to raising output, Vedanta said, would be replicating the success of output enhancement at Mangala oilfield, the biggest in Rajasthan block, in Bhagyam and Aishwariya fields. Polymer injections were used in the enhanced oil recovery (EO) project at Mangala. To recover tight oil and gas, the company said it will deploy "latest fracking technologies to recover oil and gas from tighter reservoir formations through execution of Raageshwari Deep Gas (RDG) and Aishwariya Barmer Hill (ABH)". Also, infill wells around existing producers in Mangala and Cambay will be done to accelerate near-term production, it said, adding liquid handling capacity at Mangala Processing Terminal will be increased by over 30 per cent to handle incremental volumes. "The total CapEx for these projects is $850 million," it added.